Kabbalah

Tzimtzum — The Divine Contraction

The teaching that God's first creative act was self-limitation, withdrawing the divine light to open a conceptual space where a finite universe could exist at all.

Isaac Luria taught in Safed in the 1570s that before creation, infinite divine light filled everything without gap, leaving no 'room' for anything other than God to exist. Tzimtzum names the solution: Ein Sof contracted itself, drawing back from a central point to leave a vacated space (chalal panuy) into which a single ray of light could later be sent to form finite worlds. Luria himself wrote almost nothing; the doctrine survives mainly through his disciple Chaim Vital's Etz Chaim, compiled from notes and oral teaching after Luria's death in 1572. Kabbalists have long argued over whether the contraction is literal — God actually withdrawing from a region — or a perceptual event within creatures, since Ein Sof by definition cannot be absent from anywhere; that unresolved tension is part of what makes tzimtzum one of Lurianic Kabbalah's most debated ideas.

Because Luria left virtually no autograph writings, everything called 'Lurianic Kabbalah' — including tzimtzum — is really Chaim Vital's transcription and systemization of oral teaching.

Etz Chaim

Written about in

• What Kabbalah says about humility

  Luria describes the first creative act as a withdrawal. God contracts to leave a vacated space in which something other than God can exist, which puts self-limitation at the start of the world rather than among its faults.

• What Kabbalah says about failure

  Before anything could break, Ein Sof had to contract and leave a vacated space in which something other than God could exist at all. Kabbalists have argued for centuries over whether that withdrawal is literal or only how it looks from inside. Either way, room to fail was the first thing made.